5: Lost Treasures: Reconstructing Al-Idrisi with Adam Lowe

What's Your Map?

In this episode of What’s Your Map? host and map historian Jerry Brotton is joined by Adame Lowe, the director of Factum Arte and the Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Preservation.
Adam's organisation specialises in heritage preservation, and they monitor, study and recreate intrinsically important cultural assets and artworks.
For What’s Your Map? Adam brought a re-creation of The Lost Map of al-Idrisi, which Factum made with pure silver.
To read more information on the map as it’s discussed, go to: https://oculi-mundi.com/podcast
The original map for Roger II of Sicily was created in the 12th century by Islamic cartographer al-Idrisi. It was a technically sophisticated world map that drew on several centuries of Islamic cartographic research. While the original silver disc was lost, Factum has re-created the piece based on printed maps stored at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.
In What’s Your Map?, we speak to people who live, love, and work with maps — making, preserving, interpreting, and being inspired by them. In each episode, we ask our guests to unfold a map that is special to them and tell us the story behind it.
Jerry Brotton is a British historian with a specialist interest in maps. He is aProfessor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University of London and is a regular on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 3.
What’s Your Map? is a Whistledown Production and is produced by Emily Uchida Finch
Instagram: @oculimundimaps
Website: https://oculi-mundi.com/